Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Art Lozzi and A Lush Limited Palette

If you are really good, you can do a lot with just a handful of colors. (I should learn this lesson myself!)This ist episode of The Flintstones is a really handsome cartoon. It didn't cost a lot of money, but it was done very thoughtfully and tastefully.The main colors are natural. No rainbows of pink purple and lime green.The palette of "The Swimming Pool" is 2 main colors:Subdued greens andGray.

The greys are used to separate 2 different tones of greens.

The rocks and house in the BG below are greys and blacks. They separate the two colors of the sky and grass, which themselves are related colors.

1) SKY: The greens in the sky are light olive greens2)GRASS: The greens in the grass and plants are a mixture of greyed greens, middle greens and blue greens

The rest of the colors are subtley tinted and shaded variations of the main colors.

In small areas, brighter colors are used to accent and enrich the basic color schemes-flowers, trees, etc.Art and Monte use great technique with brushes and sponges to make the simple color schemes look really deep, rich and natural.

Every area of sponge and brush storke is carefully designed. It's not a messy mish mash of unorganized detail.On this cave wall you can see where Art cut friskets in bold shapes that help emphasize the rounded shape of the house.

The shapes are cartoony and stylized but not random or wonky. They establish the forms of the larger areas they help describe.

The blue accents of the leaves are done with watered down color, so that the sky color blends with the blue to make it not jump out at you.

This harmonizes the colors and keeps them in a family.

This Mermaid image has no color thought at all. None of the colors are organic or related and nothing in the picture holds together. The girl looks like a bunch of disconnected pieces of flat shapes instead of a living creature.

The artist just poured the colors straight out of the tubes. That's not a process of choosing. Anybody can do that. That's what crayons are for.

This below is a lot more interesting and fun to look at. At least to me.GRAYS CAN BE RICHThe depth of color in the walls comes from slight variations in value and hue in the shadows, textures and lines on the walls.

Note that there are less textured areas inbetween the more textured areas. This is all part of thoughtful composition and design. It's done artistically with good taste.

If the rendering was carelessly done it would look messy and make it hard for you to see anything in the picture.Note that there are less textured areas inbetween the more textured areas. This is all part of composition and design. It's done artistically with good taste. If it was carelessly done it would look messy.This scarecrow image has every possible amateuristic mistake all in one.

Here are the same thoughtful color theories that Art Lozzi uses applied to a more detailed image.You could have tons of details but bad choices of color and rendering and it wouldn't look so warm and natural and colorful as this.

Details and long hours by themselves do nothing for art. Intelligent, creative choices make art.

LEARN ART'S TECHNIQUESBy the way, Art Lozzi is personally teaching Kali some tricks of the trade:

Its more of a task to find neutrals in flash than it is with traditional painting and photoshop...you really have to force your mouse to click into the de-saturated area of the colour palette...that Mermaid picture is horrible!

I thought how interesting it was that the sort of textured two dimensional background has non-obvious layers to separate the characters and enviroments.

Very earthen and subtle, and that's before the limited palette which I probably never would have noticed without this entry.

I'd really like to hear your viewpoint on the new Pixar Goldenbooks that use a very pretty-though-imperfect painted 60s pop art/retro Goldenbooks style; sort of a Bove thing. Word of warning- the Ratatouille one uses lotsa purple. Yes.

John,could you post some backgrounds from the original Jetsons series.those were fantastic,I love the texture and colors used in the "space sky" backgrounds with all the sleek steamlined clouds.the interior backgrounds are also incredibly stylish and well executed.When I was a kid I was stunned by how wonderful snd sleek the future looked...now its all uglyness!What the hell happened?

I think Ariel's hair is the "Christmas Colours" problem some graphic artists complain of. Red and green are complementary colours, so they clash when put together.

The red had to be darkened down to a purple shadowy colour to go with that background. Of course, rules are made to be broken, but it's often better to take a bunch of colours that are similar in some way. Like all earth tones, or all pastels.

Although I agree that the Little Mermaid image is poorly and cheaply done, it should be pointed out that the background behind it was a random sea illustration chosen by a retailer to sell the animation cel as art. (at the time the spinoff was made Disney had ceased creating cels for its feature production and the market was trying to pass off the spinoff cels as the real mccoy to a naive public).